>However, cuppled with the changes to skill improvement, it
>makes the game heavily weighted upon gear rather than
>skill.
>
>You're going to have to explain that one. I don't follow.
>Seems like apples and oranges.

I disagree, but I think what he's saying is something like this:

There's a relation: PK_Power=GearAbility + SkillPracticeAbility + CombatAbility

By making gear rarer, you in increase the impact of knowing where to get gear. By making skills harder to practice, you increase the impact of knowing how to perfect them. With these other factors increased in importance, CombatAbility gets relatively less significant.

Basically, if gear and skill practice were easy, then everyone will be about equally good at them, and battles come down to combat skill a lot more.

But maybe this isn't what he meant, and since I think the equation is more like PK_Power=GearAbility/50 + SkillPracticeAbility/1000 + PrepAbility/40 + CombatAbility (And this is an irrefutable equation I've derived from hours of statistical analysis.) maybe this post was a waste of time except to the extent it amused me. Oh well.